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the Tokyo papers are devoted to the city news, which is considered as an indispensable attraction. Serial novels, sometimes translated from the English or French, are equally attractive.

Formerly there was a belief that the newspaper could be divided into two broad classes—the great papers and the small. This division was based upon the contents rather than upon the size. It used to be considered undignified for the great papers to publish personal news and police-court reports. They relied upon political news for their principal reading matter. The Jiji, Nichi-Nichi, and Kokumin were classed as great papers, while the Yorodzu and Miyako, and later the recently suppressed Niroku, were minor papers. The success of these minor papers showed to the more important sheets that stories of human interest were valuable copy, and they began to include police-court news. It is the newer minor papers which form the Yellow Press of Japan, which it seems must exist in every country.

These yellow papers count among them some of the most widely circulated journals; they are undoubtedly the most prosperous. Most people affect to denounce these papers, and, I believe, some of them consistently; but many of these respectable persons are said to be less consistent, for they somehow manage to keep themselves well informed of the contents of these papers.

According to a malicious rumour, men read them every morning on their way to business; their wives pore over them in their absence; while a third copy finds its way to the servants’ hall. You must not, however, suppose that we take these sensational papers seriously; while enjoying their personal notes and scandals, we attach so little importance to what is contained in their columns that, when our names appear there in unequivocal light, we simply leave the matter alone without taking any notice of it. When these papers are presumptuous enough to meddle with any serious question of State, the rebuff for them is even more signal. I may cite a characteristic story to the point. While the negotiations about the Anglo-Japanese Alliance were going on, and while nobody in Tokyo—except the Government—had even the slightest suspicion of the matter, one of the yellowest journals came out one morning in the December or January before the treaty was signed with a note, under big black headlines, saying that communications were then in progress between London and Tokyo with a view to the conclusion of an alliance between the two countries. Of course, the conductors of the paper expected to create a big sensation all over the country, if not the world; but their self-congratulations were quite unavailing, for, thanks to their well-